Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#71

Post by tokyodude » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 1:50 AM UTC

overcast wrote: post #19

aardvark291 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your side-project is at all related to your day job, this most likely runs afoul of your employment agreement and IP considerations. Typically, your employer claims ownership of all IP you generate that pertains to your work or its business. For example, if you work at Google, I think it's essentially impossible to simultaneously work on any other side project that you wish to commercialize that will not be owned…

Baloney, unless you're using corporate resources to get it done, they don't own work you do outside of working hours. No judge would ever uphold that. There are tons of Google / Facebook / whatever employees that build software outside of work.

That's not my understanding.

At least in California AFAIK the law says exactly what the poster above said which is that the company owns work related their area of business even outside work hours and not on company equipment.

I always think of it this way. You're at dinner (ie, off company time). While a dinner you think of a solution for something at work. Do you own that solution? Can you charge the company $$$$$ to sell them this solution you came up with outside company hours?

If yes then there's an incentive for you to never think on company time. If no then it seems pretty clear there's a spectrum from clearly related to the company's area of business to absolutely not related to the company's area of business. If you work at Facebook and on the side you design a new IoT coffee maker that's probably on the unrelated side. If you work at Facebook and on the side make a new social networking site probably on the absolutely related side.

If you want to be safe rather than wait for a court to decide get it in writing. At least when I was at Google they offered that service. You could bring them the idea and they'd tell you if it was related or not and if not give you a signed contract saying they officially had no interest in your outside project.

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#72

Post by sodafountan » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

Meekro wrote: post #50

sodafountan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great advice. Did you work on your first business part-time while working your last "real job"? I feel like I'm in a similar boat and I'm not sure what to do next. I'm 24 and I work for a great company with really smart people whom over the past two years I've learned from quite a bit, I've always wanted to start a business though, actually in college I did just that to earn money. I created an app developmen…

I started my first business while I was in college, and kept it going on the side while working the real job. After a year at the real job, I decided to leave and focus on the business. What happened to your company from college-- did you shut it down? Sell it? Did it die on its own? I don't think anyone can tell you whether it's the right time for you. Neither decision is permanent, though: If you do leave and it do…

I appreciate the reply,

My business kind of evaporated given the ever decreasing market share of Windows Phone. I was able to carve out a pretty nice little niche where I created small apps for Windows Phone in even smaller targeted niche markets where there was usually almost no competition. (I built Workout apps targeting specific exercises, I built small little games that were popular on iPhone and Android but never got ported to Windows Phone, alarm clock apps, I created a piano app that did really well, things like that) given the sparse selection of apps on Windows Phone most of my apps did pretty well with no marketing whatsoever.

I tried to pivot to iPhone and Android and saw a bit of success on Android but the business model didn't really translate to those platforms given the oversaturation of the app store, I saw my revenues dwindle down consistently and by the time I landed my first job two years ago my passive income had dropped to about 500 dollars a month, it's now completely gone, nobody uses Windows Phone anymore.

I am working on a much bigger app now targeting iPhone and Android, but the app market is tough to penetrate. I guess the only path for me going forward is to either stick with my current job that I know well and put in more work on the app, or look for a new job where I can learn more and earn a bit more but my responsibilities will most likely increase and I'll be forced to learn a new tech stack which can take a toll and could affect my ability to work on the app in off hours, I've been working on the app for about five months now and I really don't want to lose my momentum.

Anyway sorry for the rant lol, that's my predicament. I agree I could always go back to the workforce if anything goes awry but I'm not even at that decision yet, it's more a question of how do I allocate my time properly until I become profitable enough to make that decision, and how long do I put off moving my life forward given the uncertainty of the app market.

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#73

Post by aardvark291 » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

robodale wrote: post #26

aardvark291 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your side-project is at all related to your day job, this most likely runs afoul of your employment agreement and IP considerations. Typically, your employer claims ownership of all IP you generate that pertains to your work or its business. For example, if you work at Google, I think it's essentially impossible to simultaneously work on any other side project that you wish to commercialize that will not be owned…

Wrong. You will have signed an Intellectual Property Assignment Agreement for anything like you mention to be enforceable. My advice: if you want to build something on the side and are presented with a legal doc like I mentioned above...walk away.

> You will have signed an Intellectual Property Assignment Agreement for anything like you mention to be enforceable

Yes, and signing this agreement is a condition of employment.

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#74

Post by aardvark291 » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

overcast wrote: post #19

aardvark291 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your side-project is at all related to your day job, this most likely runs afoul of your employment agreement and IP considerations. Typically, your employer claims ownership of all IP you generate that pertains to your work or its business. For example, if you work at Google, I think it's essentially impossible to simultaneously work on any other side project that you wish to commercialize that will not be owned…

Baloney, unless you're using corporate resources to get it done, they don't own work you do outside of working hours. No judge would ever uphold that. There are tons of Google / Facebook / whatever employees that build software outside of work.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1969979

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#75

Post by aardvark291 » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

riku_iki wrote: post #56

geofft wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't afford as many lawyers as Google can. Do you have examples of cases where a Google-style IP agreement was ruled unenforceable when someone was moonlighting on something that was in the same field of business as some other part of the company (but unrelated to their own day job)?

From another hand there are thousands of ex-googlers left company to engage in startups, and Google likely doesn't have enough lawyers to go after each of them..

You're not arguing that it's legal; you're arguing that you're unlikely to get caught. That's different.